The Microeconomics of Complex Economies: Evolutionary, Institutional, Neoclassical, and Complexity Perspectives by Wolfram Elsner & Torsten Heinrich & Henning Schwardt

Author:Wolfram Elsner & Torsten Heinrich & Henning Schwardt [Elsner, Wolfram]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780124115996
Publisher: Elsevier Science
Published: 2014-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Definitions and Conditions of Emergence

The concept has by now been widely accepted in many disciplines as well as interdisciplinary approaches (mostly under the label of “complex systems”). Since in other fields even the symmetry of the elements is at best questionable, a number of other criteria have been introduced and are used alongside with broken symmetry. Among those are the impossibility to infer the system’s macro-level and characteristics from its micro-level elements (irreducibility), its impact on the micro-level elements’ behavior (downward causation), the robustness of the macro-level patterns compared to variation and turbulence on the micro-level (dissipativity), and a few less common others. For an overview, also discussing the more recent debate, see Corning (2002). While irreducibility is largely intuitive equivalent to the argument from the earlier debate covered earlier, the other two warrant a few more words of explanation.

Downward causation is the idea that not only the system’s micro-level has an impact on the emerging macro-level, but there is a feedback loop that, in turn, makes the behavior of the micro-level dependent on what happens on the macro-level. Note that this is not an additional assumption but merely another way to put the general idea since the macro-level does not exist independently from the micro-level and it only has characteristics that somehow also exist on the micro-level. If for instance a solid metal structure develops ferromagnetic properties, this is only due to the fact that the magnetic polarity of its elements is perfectly aligned. For the first or the first few elements that align themselves, this is a random alignment, but the arrangement of the structure leads to this first aligned element having an impact on the alignments of the surrounding elements (as modeled in physics with the Ising model). The same is true for a group of people developing over the centuries into a consistent language group and then forming a nation state. It also holds for the universal acceptance of technological standards and institutions or moral codes. There are plenty of other examples.

Dissipativity is the ability of a structure to exist in and on top of a turbulent environment by avoiding to absorb the inflowing entropy. In effect this typically means structures that organize their elements but exist independently of specific elements. The structure persists while elements and entropy flow in and out. In effect it is a subsystem that conserves a certain kind of information while not conserving the information it is exposed to in its environment.

One of the striking features of emergence is that it defines in a generic way an aggregated level complete with its own properties, characteristics and laws of behavior. This is different from the common macro-level which usually is defined as simply the entire system or the reference level of the data under investigation (e.g., a country if the respective analysis works with data compiled by that country’s government). The usual macro-level is therefore context specific. An emergent layer is different and may exist independently of context, region and era. An

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